Richard Stallman wrote: > A simple example: it is totally trivial on Windows to build a 'service' > from a DLL, exposing its entire interface. This would be running as a > separate executable, but would look like a regular library to any > windows program. > > The FSF's position is that the GPL applies to any programs which are > designed to link with that DLL, that this is legally equivalent to > statically linking them.
OK: it is equally simple to expose the same functionality under a totally different API. For any GPL dll I find, it would take me all of 30-60 minutes to generate a 'server' that calls the DLL for me; my apps connecting to this 'proxy' would talk to this proxy API, which is drop-dead simple under windows. To what extent can these apps be said to be designed to link to this DLL? And what if I build an alternate implementation of this proxy API which does a faux implementation of this proxy API (or just a really crappy one slapped together during lunch)? I could then claim that my program is designed to link to 'whichever windows service implementing this API', and what do you know, there's 'several' of them available, _both_ GPLed. And my app using them doesn't need to be. Emile -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
